skonen_blades

I am nothing if not restrained.
I have a rich inner emotional life
that rarely pokes its head above the waterline
My ecstasy and rage are Loch Ness monsters.
Mythical to outsiders
My feelings live in the depths
Under darkness and pressure
Calmly existing in their environment they’re used to
Exploding if brought too quickly to the surface



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The studded club swung down and cratered the ground with a sound like a collapsing house. The Brinotaur’s muscles shuddered with the impact as it’s weapon hit the ground. To call it a club wasn’t entirely correct. It was more like a building with a handle. The creature was the biggest mass of flesh I’d seen down here in the under.

I had rolled to the side, pushed even further by the shockwave of the club’s impact. A wall of air like a giant hand swept me across the ground. I wouldn’t have survived a glancing blow and I’d be disintegrated by a direct hit. I needed to think of a way out of here fast.

It felt like I was in an arena but there didn’t appear to be an audience. The Brinotaur and I were in a circular room with a dirt floor about as big as an empty warehouse except the walls climbed up into darkness. A few support pillars lanced up into the blackness from the ground but I couldn’t see the ceiling. The Brinotaur seemed to know not to destroy them but I didn’t see how it could avoid it, being so large and clumsy.

I’d woken up here. I couldn’t tell if I’d been randomly selected from the other kidnapped humans or if this was punishment. The creatures here had an opaque system of governing that I couldn’t parse.

The Brinotaur, for instance. I’d heard of it but I hadn’t seen it yet. A mythical creature used as a boogeyman to our slave work force if we didn’t pull our quotas. My quotas were up and my quotas were fine. I’m not sure how I got here.

The Brinotaur tugged his weapon up and back onto his shoulder. It was an amphibious creature. A head like a bull but green and slimy with no hair. Gills fluttered under its ears. Mottled skin glistened, wrapped around his enormous muscles. It looked too big for the gravity here. Like merely breathing and rolling over would be a herculean feat but here it was, walking around disturbingly quick even if imprecise and hampered by its immense inertia. It must need a water source but there was none here in the room.

That’s when the ceiling exploded into light and the ocean came down from the sky.



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In times of great stress, darling dragons will eat each other. This is how they went extinct.

During moments of intense ecstasy, unicorns will often burst into flame. This is how they disappeared from the planet.

Cyclopses are intensely allergic to peanuts and olives. They were also too stupid to remember this fact about themselves. So much for them.

There was only ever one lonely Minotaur. He lived for seven hundred years. His origins are lost. His death was a celebration of mourning on par with Diana, Princess of Wales.

Mermaids and Sirens all fell in love with sailors and became mute women with pain-riddled legs. Land locked and crippled, they died in brothels or on street corners.

There are still plenty of centaurs. They live in the deepest reaches of Africa.

Not all creatures were hunted to extinction by man.




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